Tim McGraw
by kittenkins
Summary: The one that got away.  The road not taken.  The people you were, and the people you become.  The loving, and the letting go.  All-Human.
1. Chapter 1

**I can't quite believe I'm actually posting something here, as opposed to just reading. But here it is, my first Sookie/Eric story, based of Taylor Swift's gorgeously indulgent 'Tim McGraw'. **

**Also, I ought to apologise at the outset if the chaptering/chapter breaks seem a little odd; I was only intending for this to be a one-shot, but it morphed into a 25 page beast. I figured slightly odd chapters would be preferable to 13,000 words in one go. I hope you enjoy!**

**For M.**

**SPOV**

"Hurry your ass up Sook! We're gonna miss our flight!"

My brother was standing in the doorway to my tiny New York apartment, my suitcase gripped in one hand, the other wiping anxiously at his face.

"Jason Stackhouse, you watch your mouth!" I hollered back, darting from my bedroom to the kitchen/lounge, surveying each room for forgotten knick-knacks. Of course, I'd already double and triple-checked the place, but it was fun to see Jase sweat. He'd only left Bon Temps twice. Once to help me move to The Big Apple and now, to help me move out again, and despite the fact he was almost thirty, he still hadn't quite managed to wrap his brain around the intricacies of air travel.

Finally though, after one more unnecessary sweep (I was prepared to admit it might have been as much about my reluctance to leave the city I had fallen so deeply in love with as it was about pissing off my big brother) it was time to go. I banged the door closed, twisting the handle just right to get the lock to catch and posted my key back through the letter-box. The tinny noise it made as it hit floor echoed a little in the hallway.

Jason hefted my case into his other hand in order to clap my shoulder comfortingly.

"You'll be back. You ain't done with the big city yet, 'Sis".

I had finished my journalism course at the top of my class and was heading to Los Angeles in a week to start my a new job as a member of a small magazine's film review staff. I'd wanted to stay where I was but the rent on the apartment was too much once my room-mate Amelia had moved out, and paid job-opportunities for someone just of college were few and far between.

I nodded, giving him a smile, and picked up my carry-on bag from the floor, following him down the dingy stairwell and out onto the swelteringly hot street to hail a cab. I stared out of the window on our way to the airport, taking in the bustle for the last time in a long time. Jason was right. I wasn't done with New York yet. More importantly, I didn't think it was done with me either. This wasn't goodbye, it was a parting of ways, like friends whose lives diverge after high school or college, but who know the other is always out there, waiting for their lives to run parallel again.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

We got back to Bon Temps late that evening after a delay on our Monroe flight. Jason's best friend Hoyt picked us up from Shreveport airstrip and chatted to me the whole way home whilst Jase slept in the back of the truck. The lights were still burning in the Stackhouse homestead when we drove up the pot-holed lane, bouncing along right up to the front door, and I could see Gran, rocking gently on the porch-swing and beaming at the three of us as we piled out with my bags.

"Susanna Stackhouse, you look set to disappear on me" she scolded, hugging me tightly. "You'll need a feeding up before you go out to Tinsel Town". I chuckled. Feeding up was the last thing I needed to do before I hit LA, but there was no arguing with Adele Stackhouse. I wouldn't be able to, even if I wanted.

The boys (they would always be boys, no matter how old they got) brought my things up to my old bedroom and then said their goodnights, with promises of beers in Merlotte's and visits for lunch soon. Gran said goodnight shortly after, ruffling the top of my head before she retired to her bedroom. I grabbed a glass of water, staring out of the window at the darkened yard as I drank it and then went to my room, determined to unpack the smaller of my cases now, otherwise I'd be living out of it for the next week, and I was fairly sure that there was laundry in it that needed doing. I plugged my Ipod into its dock and played it quietly as I emptied the contents of my case, sorting piles of things to hang up and things to wash. When I was done, I shoved the case under the bed, moving around a few things already under there to make room, dislodging a battered hat-box in the process.

I smiled to myself, my heart beating a little faster as I pulled the floral patterned box towards me and picked it up, sitting down cross-legged on the bed and lifting the lid off to inspect the age-worn items inside it. Post-It notes, ticket stubs, doodles on scraps of paper, graduation pins, one glove with the fingers singed off, photographs; they were all still in there, covered in a fine film of dust and smelling slightly musty, like the closet in the landing that was only used for guest towels.

If I was honest, I hadn't thought about him for a while. Life had gotten busy with exams, final submission deadlines, internship applications and work experience, and thoughts of the boy who had been the love of my young life had taken a back-seat to late nights, too much caffeine and stress. Before then, he'd never been too far away from the front of my mind. He was in every pair of beaten-up boots, every scruffy blonde head towering over the surrounding crowd, every booming laugh and every lonely night I'd spent in first year, second-guessing every decision I'd made that had finally delivered me to that point. It was him in every un-opened email. Him in every piece of hand-written mail that was slipped through my letter-box. It was him every time my cell rang, even though it couldn't be because he didn't have my new number. It was always him, until reality crept in, and it wasn't anymore. It never would be either; both of us were too hurt and too damn sad for either to make the first move.

That was four years ago, and though the rawness of it had long since faded out, I had continued to think about him a lot. There was always something I'd heard, or seen, or done that he would've found entertaining or interesting. There were others after him of course, I was by no means celibate (my inability to remain so something I secretly blamed on him. He'd spoilt me as far as _that_ was concerned). None of them ever quite matched up.

I flicked through the photographs, smiling at our wide, dorky grins and found myself thinking about him for the first time in quite a while. I wondered about the boy I used to know, the boy I had loved, and what he'd spent the last four years of his life doing. I thought about the us that had been, the us that might have been, and wondered about the man he would have grown-up to become.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

**Five Years Previously**

_Tara attacked me from behind as I was off-loading new textbooks into my locker._

"_Fuckin' Seniors!" was her greeting and I laughed at her enthusiasm even as I righted myself after her onslaught. We'd been best friends since kindergarten, and I could appreciate her excitement for the commencement of our senior year. Ten more months, and we were out of here, which was a bigger deal for Tara than it was for me. I wanted to leave to see more of the world, but I knew that a piece of me would always belong in Bon Temps. Tara just wanted to get the fuck away from her mother. I couldn't blame her, so I basked in her jubilation as we headed into the quad to eat lunch._

"_T! Sook!"._

_We were beckoned over to the spot beneath the tree that had been ours since our first day of junior high by Tara's cousin Lafayette, Sam Merlotte and Tray Dawson, who were lounging against the trunk with what looked like a five-course banquet spread out in front of them._

"_What the heck is all this?" I asked, trying to find a space to sit down amongst the food. The gumbo caught my eye as I nudged it out of the way. Tara tore off a hunk of corn bread and popped it in her mouth, sprawling out on the grass and pulling a book from her satchel._

"_This, Sweetpea, is my practise run menu for New Orleans". Lafayette gestured grandly to all the dishes. "An' since I damn near cooked myself outta room in my refrigerator an' the thought of you workin' those turkey sandwiches for another year just about broke my sequin-covered heart, I thought I could provide for y'all"._

_Sam shook his head, and without opening his eyes, reached for the corn bread as well, pulling some off the batch._

"_Make the most of it Sooks. There ain't gonna be any free meals when I'm the most famous chef in The Big Easy. Not even for you"._

_I laughed and dug into the gumbo, relishing it and refusing to feel guilty about my own lunch, squashed and going to waste at the bottom of my purse. Tray and I could split the cookies in Study Hall later and Jase would eat the sandwiches after dinner. Besides, Lafayette's cooking was too good to turn down. Gran wouldn't have approved of me turning down such a generous offer. At least, that's what I told myself as I dipped the bread into the gumbo._

"_Who is that tall glass of water?" Tara piped up, looking past me over the rim of her sunglasses and licking her lips in a way I wasn't entirely sure was deliberate. I followed her gaze, wondering who she was talking about. We knew pretty much every swoon-worthy face in our year, had lusted over them from afar. The only way someone could get Tara's attention that quickly would be if they were new._

_I could tell who she was looking at without asking her. He was definitely new._

_Tall, scruffy blonde hair- like Kurt Cobain's, if Kurt Cobain had been friendly with a shower- and lean. He was standing off to the side of the quad, clutching files and books with the distinctive look of someone trying not to look as lost as they are. He was wearing jeans, heavy boots and a leather jacket over a white t-shirt. He was definitely not from around here. We all knew better than to wear leather before December._

"_He looks lost. Maybe we should help him". Tara pushed herself to sit upright, never taking her eyes off New Boy._

"_Jesus Christ, Tara" Sam drawled, opening his eyes to look at our class-mate with only the barest hint of interest. "Put your tongue away. You didn't get enough action over the summer?"._

"_Fuck you Merlotte" she retorted, before grabbing my hand. "He's coming over here. Look, Sookie!". I shook her grip off and rolled my eyes._

"_He's not Elvis, Tara" I laughed. "He's probably a jerk anyway. The hot ones always are". _

_Lafayette cleared his throat pointedly, and I threw a rolled up ball of aluminium foil at him._

"_You're a jerk too. Bein' gay doesn't get you off the hook"._

"_Excuse me?". Blondie had walked over to us, and was standing a little uncomfortably._

"_You all right Bro?" Tray drawled, no doubt trying to take attention off Tara, who was staring at the newcomer with definite googly-eyes._

"_I'm looking for Mr Davies's class. I'm Eric. I'm new" he added, unnecessarily, shifting awkwardly from one foot to the other._

"_Don't you have Davies this semester Sook?" Sam asked, pointedly ignoring Tara, who'd gone from googly-eyes to death-stare in his direction._

"_I do. I was going to head over there now actually". I gathered up my things, aware of Eric hovering in the background. "You can come with me if you want? I've gotta call by the library first"._

_His face cracked into a relieved smile and he nodded. "Please. I've got to register there as well"._

"_Okay. Let's get you sorted". I grinned at him, partly to be reassuring, partly to wind Tara up but also, partly because his own smile was so very devastating, and it was hard not to reciprocate._

"_See you later guys. Tray? There's cookies for Study"._

_He whooped as Eric and I walked away. I chuckled and offered out my hand to the impossibly tall boy beside me. "I'm Sookie, by the way"._

_He juggled around his armful of files to take my hand._

"_Nice to meet you Sookie". He smiled again, and I swear, my heart melted just a little._

"_Nice to meet you too, Eric"._

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

It was nice. And it wasn't long before we realised just _how_nice it was to meet each other.

It took him two weeks to ask me out. By that stage, he'd found his feet, settled into his classes and was hanging out with us at lunch and as he became more sure of himself in his new surroundings it became clear that actually, he was a far cry from being the awkward, slightly shy boy we'd met that first day.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

_I had a free period before lunch on Fridays, so it had been delegated to me to go and save our spot under the tree for everyone else. I was propped up against the trunk reading the copy of Wuthering Heights we'd been prescribed for English Literature, mentally wincing at how awful Cathy and Heathcliffe were to each other, when a shadow fell over the page and I looked up, not that I needed to. Or course it was Eric. He was the only person I knew with the physical mass to block out the sun._

"_What're you reading?" he asked, collapsing on the ground beside me and wrapping an arm round my shoulder. He was quite demonstrative. I found ignoring him worked better than calling him on it. I flashed the cover of the book at him, and he rolled his eyes._

"_Greatest love story ever written my ass" he snorted._

"_You've read Wuthering Heights?" I asked disbelievingly. It wasn't that he wasn't smart, he was just more maths and science orientated than I was. Even if he did read for fun, I couldn't have pictured him immersing himself in the classics._

"_I have depths" he smirked in response._

_We were quiet for a while, him rooting through his bag to pull out his lunch, me trying to finish the chapter I was on before the hordes descended._

"_So I've been thinking" he started, chewing thoughtfully on his sandwich, his blue eyes twinkling in a completely disarming way._

"_Dangerous"._

_He pouted momentarily before grinning again. "We should go out. As in date. You and me"._

_I burst out laughing, but immediately felt guilty when his face fell. "You could've just said no" he huffed before pulling out a workbook and beginning to pour over some homework that was no doubt due for the class after lunch._

_I watched him, mulling over his suggestion. He was funny, he was clever, he looked as good as a cold ice-cream on a hot day, as Gran would have said. He was kind of arrogant, but he was also polite. Did I want to date Eric Northman? The more I thought about it, the more I realised the answer was a resounding 'yes'. The bell rang, and I knew my window was closing. We would be joined by the rest of the gang in a matter of minutes, and the moment would vanish. I tapped him on the shoulder and he looked at me, the remains of his man-pout still playing around the corners of his mouth, and kissed him. A tiny kiss. On the cheek. It was enough to make his whole face light up, and the sight of that previously unseen smile made my stomach flip._

"_Have you been to The Bayou yet?" I asked him and he shook his head, still grinning like a complete loser._

"_You really should have had the chicken fried steak by now. Your arteries'll never be the same again, but you won't care. Pick me up at eight?"_

_He nodded again, still with the smile, and I couldn't help but feel a little smug, imagining what his reaction to other, less school-appropriate, things would be if that was the effect of a little peck on the cheek. We were joined moments later by Tara, Tray and Sam, all bitching about their respective workloads as they sprawled out to eat lunch on the grass. Sam shot me a dirty look for stealing his seat against the tree, but chuckled when I stuck my tongue out at him. _

_Eric and I didn't breath a word of our date to them, we didn't even especially look at each other whilst we ate and caught up on their days. After, he was going to study in the library whilst I headed off to Literature. He walked me as far as the corridor junction and his hand brushed against mine as we parted ways._

_He picked me up bang on eight that night, coming in to say hi to Gran, effectively writing himself into her good books permanently. We went for dinner and didn't stop talking once. We made each other laugh, bickered over curly fries or chunky fries, tried our luck at getting beer (no such, Gran was a well-loved member of Reynard Parish and no one wanted to bring the wrath of Adele Stackhouse down on their head) and after dinner, enjoying ourselves too much to go home just then, we went for a walk. He held my hand the whole time, despite the sticky heat of the last of the summer evenings._


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

**SPOV**

It was, and remained to be, the best date I'd ever been on. I was wined and dined a couple of times in New York, taken to the ballet, taken to see a couple of Broadway shows and even experienced a carriage ride through the park, but none of it would ever quite compare to that first date with Eric. None of it would ever re-capture the equal parts excitement and contentment of that night. We were eighteen, we were standing on the edge of something new, not just between us but also of the rest of our lives. There was no one else I wanted to share that with; I knew it to my bones by the end of that first date, and so did he. By the following Monday, we were official. There was no talk of further dates, of seeing other people or taking things slowly to see where we were headed. We dived straight in, balls to the wall, going as big as we possibly could.

For a while, we were completely indestructible.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

_He'd let me pick the music coming home from the movie in Shreveport, calling it a testament to how much he liked me. I was fairly sure he liked me a heck of a lot less when I plugged in my Ipod and scrolled through it to the cheesiest country music I could find._

"_Really, Sookie? We like so much of the same music, and you put **that** on?" he grumbled good-naturedly._

"_I was born and raised up on this music, Buddy. Do I bitch about your screeching, Swedish death metal?" I sassed him back. For what he had told me were such a peaceful, laid back collection of people, the Swedes sure did love their angry rock._

"_No. But I don't inflict my music on you the same way you do to me"._

"_Well, suck it up. Those of us who need directions to get to the movie-house, when they've been living here four months, shouldn't be trusted with important soundtrack decisions"._

_He chuckled at that and we drove on in silence for a little while, until his truck started making a worrisome whining noise._

"_Bastard", Eric muttered, shaking his head. The truck was something of a point of contention between him and his parents. They'd bought it as a joke, telling him he'd fit in more with the locals. What they didn't mention, until the other week when he complained of weird smells coming from it, was that they'd bought it off Stan Davies. Stan was notorious in Bon Temps for his inventive ways of making lumps of scrap metal run just long enough to get his customers home, and then insisting that they'd been driven too hard over the rough road._

_There was a bang from under the bonnet, the truck lurched forward, and then stalled. Eric turned the key once, twice, three times, but nothing happened. The ignition just clicked over, sounding tired and pathetic. "Fuck" he cursed, hopping down from the cab and opening up the front. I followed him in time to see a billow of smoke waft up into the clear night sky._

_There was no point either of us looking the engine over so I called Jason, who agreed to come pick us up._

"_You'll owe me though, Sook" he warned. "You can take my turn on dishes for the rest of the week"._

"_Fine". I gritted my teeth. I hated dishes, and Jason darn well knew it._

_We would have at least a half hour wait for my brother, not including how long it would take him if he got distracted by Hoyt or whatever girl was the Flavour of the Week, so Eric and I hopped into the flat-bed of the truck, spreading out a blanket so we didn't get too grubby. God knows what Stan had stored back here before the Northman's bought it. As it was, I was glad I'd opted not to dress up tonight. My age-old jeans and plaid shirt couldn't be scruffed up too much more than they already were. We lay on our backs, his arm around my shoulder, my head resting against his, and stared up into the night sky. It was clear and cool, a tiny bite in the air letting us know that winter was just starting to set in properly. Eric had worn his leather jacket again this evening and it was the first time he hadn't complained of being too warm in it. We didn't speak, the chirp of the night-bugs the only noise breaking the otherwise comfortable silence. I was looking at the stars, running through what I could remember Gran teaching me a couple of summers ago. I found Orion, Cassiopeia and The Big Dipper and was trying to pick out anything else I could remember, when Eric spoke beside me._

"_Your brain's doing that thing again" he chuckled, planting a kiss on the top of my head. He always said that I thought so hard he could hear my brain whirring, trying to keep up with all the thoughts it spouted off. "What're you thinking about?"._

"_I'm seeing what constellations I remember". I craned my head to look at him. "Can you see any you know?"._

_He shook his head, an odd, intense look in his eyes that made my stomach churn._

"_I don't need to look to the stars, Sookie. Your eyes are so much brighter, so much clearer than they are. I'd rather look into them"._

_This, from the man that hated the saccharine sweetness and clichéd analogies of Tim McGraw's finest writing?_

"_You're an ole' sweet-talker" I giggled, rolling my eyes and hitting him lightly on the shoulder. He was usually so loud and boisterous, so full of jokes or cocky, sarcastic comments that the gentility and intensity with which he was now looking at me with were a mite unnerving._

"_I mean it Sookie" he insisted, sitting upright and pulling a hand through his already unkempt hair. "We've been having such a good time together. I think about you all the time. And I know we've not been dating very long but, well...I love you. I think I've loved you since that night in The Bayou"._

_Oh._

_I loved him too. He was right, we hadn't been dating very long, only three months, but already I couldn't remember **not** loving him. We had both fallen, hard and fast, for one another, and though the pragmatic side of my brain was murmuring warnings that things were going too fast, that I shouldn't drop my whole hand, that we had snowball's hope in hell of making things work in the 'forever' sense, the side of my brain that was dominated by girly teenage hormones was currently squealing like my cousin at a Justin Bieber concert._

"_I love you too"._

_He beamed at me, and I beamed right back before settling back onto the floor of the truck, pulling him down with me and resuming our earlier position._

"_You know" he murmured, so quietly I almost believed he was talking to himself. "This changes things. Possibly everything"._

_I shook my head against him. "It doesn't change anything"._

_0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o_

We were, as it turned out, both right. It didn't change anything, because I knew what I'd been feeling before I ever uttered the words out loud. All it meant was that I had a label to put to the flip in my stomach when I saw him stride across the parking lot on a Monday morning. How we behaved together didn't change. The things we talked about didn't either. It didn't change that we bickered like a pair of old ladies about the stupid things, and pulled together for each other on the more serious stuff.

But he had been right too. It did change things. Not on the surface, but underneath. With labels and names, came an intensifying of our feelings. We dug ourselves into them, wearing them like a warm coat. We entrenched ourselves, relishing every second, even the seconds when he pissed me off so much I could've pulled his hair out.

But of course, people who bury themselves in love always end up having to dig themselves back out. And with the declaration of our feelings, that became, over the course of our final year, damn near impossible to do.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

_I threw the screen door open with a bang and stomped into the kitchen, throwing my purse carelessly onto the table and storming up the stairs, slamming my bedroom door behind me with such a force I was surprised the frame didn't crack._

_He made me so MAD!_

_Usually he wound me up because he thought is was funny. He'd poke fun at me, strolling down the corridor with that confident-as-hell swagger, until I wanted to smack his stupid, smug face. But that was what we did, and it was never done with anything other than good-humour. It was an affectionate teasing of my 'quirks', as he'd called them- personally, I didn't think it was 'quirky' to want to be on time for class. It was just polite. Also, no way was I getting a detention in Senior Year for tardiness when I had an otherwise spotless record._

_Lately though, something had changed. He was picking fights with me, muttering under his breath or picking up on any mistakes I made and correcting them, spinning them out and making me feel like crap while he was at it. He knew he was doing it as well, we'd had an argument about it two weeks ago. He'd apologised, said he hadn't realised he was doing it and that he'd stop._

_Which he hadn't._

"_Sookie!" came his shout, the screen door banging closed behind him as he came into the house. I had a brief moment of feeling grateful that Gran wasn't in this afternoon to hear how we were treating her doors, before being enraged that he'd followed me in here. It was so fucking typical of him to want to get the last word in, even if it meant coming into someone else's property to do it._

"_Sookie!". I could hear him pound up the stairs and readied myself, standing in the middle of my bedroom, arms crossed over my chest, arched eyebrow fixed in place._

"_Do you want to tell me what that was about?" he asked, his own brow arched as he opened my door and leaned against the frame._

"_Do you want to tell me what the hell you're doing in my house?" I retorted "I told you to leave me alone". I was resisting the urge to stamp my foot._

"_I'm here because I don't want to fight. What's wrong?"._

"_You don't want to fight? Oh, that's pretty darn rich Eric Northman. You've been nothing but an ass to me all week, and now you don't want to fight? Well too bad. We're fighting"._

_Must. Not. Hit. Boyfriend._

"_Why are we fighting?" he said exasperatedly, running his hands through his hair and tugging, as if he was literally trying to move his hairline back a couple of inches._

"_Because you're a dick!" I shouted, losing my cool my completely. "And you've been being a dick for the last two weeks, even though you said you'd stop. It's like you've wanted to have a fight with me. So here we are, having one. Happy now?". I hissed the last part, bracing myself for an onslaught about how I was being unreasonable and irrational and about how I was stressing out so much about finals that I'd lost all sense of humour._

_I was not expecting him to cross the room and pull me into a hug that was as fierce as it was gentle. It was like all his bottled up emotions were leeching from his pores. I didn't hug him back. I caved all too easily where our physical relationship was concerned, and it had gotten him out of trouble on more than one occasion. Not this time. Not until he explained himself._

"_You're right" he mumbled into the top of my head._

"_I'm sorry, I'm what-now?" I bit off sarcastically._

"_Right". He broke our embrace and stopped a little to look me in the eye._

"_I've been in a bad mood for ages, and I've been taking it on you. And I'm sorry"._

"_Why? Why are you taking it out me? That's kinda screwed up, Eric" I said, a little more gently._

"_Because I'm scared" he admitted, leading me to the end of my bed and sitting down, pulling me onto his lap and burrowing his face into my shoulder._

"_Scared about what?". My anger was gone, totally and absolutely as I smoothed out the ends of his hair. Eric never got scared, not ever. We'd watched Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project not so long ago and he'd chuckled the whole way through both of them. If Eric was scared about something, I should be petrified._

"_About us"._

_He pulled back to look at my face, shaking his head at the vacant expression he found there._

"_You can't tell me you haven't thought about it Sookie? My family's going back to Sweden at the end of the summer. Indefinitely. And you're going to New York at the end of the summer. Indefinitely. How can that not be worrying to you?"._

_Honestly? Because I'd been so focussed on actually graduating that I hadn't put much thought into what happened after. Now he mentioned it though...? It didn't sound great._

"_So what're you sayin'? We could do long distance. Loads of couple do it for college" I insisted, the fear I'd been neglecting for months catching up with me all in one go, leaving me feeling like I might drown._

"_It's the 'indefinitely' that's getting me" was his gentle response._

_Oh._

_Indefinitely. It's implication was so...well, definite._

"_Eric", I choked on the lump in my throat, fighting it down because if he was going to be a grown-up about this I sure as heck could be too. "Do you want to break-up?"._

_He crushed me to him, clinging on as if he could hold tight enough for basic geography not to be an issue. I clung back, and we held onto each other without saying a word for a long time._

"_I'm not ready for this to be over" I whispered quietly, after what felt like hours. It felt hopeless, a little cowardly even, like keeping something on life support long after it should have been let go of, to spare the grief and pain._

"_Me either" he murmured, pulling back again. His eyes were red-rimmed, and he wiped his face almost angrily. "I don't want this to be over. I don't think we're done yet"._

"_We could always see out the year" I suggested, wondering just how deep my masochistic tendencies ran, even as I said the words. "There's still finals to go, and Prom, and graduation. The whole summer. We could see where we are then?"_

_He took a deep breath and nodded, holding my gaze for a long moment. "You sure?" he asked._

_I nodded emphatically. "We've got the rest of the year. And I love you"._

_0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o_

Stupid? Undoubtedly. Since then, I've wondered what would have happened if we'd broken up then. Would I be over him by now? Is it just the idea of never having reached the full potential of what we could have been that's kept me clinging on the last four years? With hindsight, we probably should have just bitten the damn bullet and done it then, and spared ourselves the gut-wrenching misery of later.

But hindsight really is twenty twenty.

At the time, all I knew was that I loved him, and that would be enough. I didn't know what he'd done to me; I had never been prone to romanticism, my first boyfriend knocked that out of me pretty quickly when I caught him cheating. But Eric was so bull-headed. Once he'd decided that we were going to be okay, I got swept up in the tide of his stubbornness, bolstered to the point where I honestly believed it too. Mostly, anyway. It was always there, at least for me, lurking around the periphery. I'd feel it whenever he'd squeeze my hand a little tighter than necessary, or when I'd catch him watching me as I chatted to our friends. There was always something.

I've always wondered if it was that edge of _Something_ that made the rest of our year together the time of my life.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

"_Oh my God! Sook, you look beautiful!" Tara squealed when I stepped out of my bathroom, grabbing both my hands and spinning us round. There had been a lot of squealing and jumping up and down over the last couple of days. It seemed like the whole Senior Year had Prom on the brain and it was not a pretty sight._

"_Thanks T". I mock-curtsied, resisting my own urge to come over all princess-like. "You look stunning" I told her with a grin, tugging her in front of my full-length mirror so we could see ourselves side-by-side. Her dress was a vivid, peacock-blue shade, Grecian-style, with layers upon layers of chiffon floating around her legs. Mine was black and silky. Where Tara's floated, mine skimmed. It was, without a doubt, the most risqué thing I'd ever worn and I was a little bit frightened of Gran's reaction when I came down the stairs. _

_We helped each other with our jewellery and were just putting the finishing touches to our make-up when the distinctive noise of the screen door closing reverberated through the house and Gran's voice hollered from the bottom of the stairs._

"_Sookie Stackhouse. Tara May Thornton. Put those hair tongs down and come greet your callers"._

_One last check in the mirror, one more spritz of perfume and we were ready to go. At the top of the stairs we could see Sam, Tray and Eric in the hallway, talking in low tones about the last match of the high school football season. They looked a little uncomfortable in their tuxes- Eric had cussed the early start to the Louisiana summer all week- but they had both scrubbed up amazingly well for three people who were normally so scruffy. My stomach flipped a little when Eric turned to grin at us coming down the stairs. The man knew how to wear a pair of Levis better than anyone I''d ever met, but he sure did do that tux justice as well. He just looked good in anything. Damn him._

_We shared a group hug at the bottom of the stairs as Tara and I were presented with our corsages, and Eric and I kissed whilst Sam tied Tara's around her wrist, and just as I thought the night couldn't get any more cheesy, Gran and Jason emerged from the kitchen, bearing a camera. We grinned and posed awkwardly in our formal-wear- all of us more at home in shorts and t-shirts- and I surrendered to the atmosphere of the evening. Yes, it was corny. Yes, the heels I was wearing would be coming off before ten o'clock, but I was with my boyfriend, my best friends, and really, this was probably the best way to end our high school lives; playing at being grown-ups for the evening before entering the real world in a couple of weeks._

"_You look beautiful" Eric murmured in my ear as we climbed into Sam's truck._

"_You clean up pretty good yourself, Mr Northman" I winked, and rolled my eyes as he preened._

_It was a damn-near perfect night. There was food, corny posed photographs, dancing and awards. Eric won the 'Most Likely To Star In A James Cameron Film About Vikings' award, and I won the 'Most Likely To Achieve A College Diploma First-Time Around' award. Our classmates were lame, but it was nice to be noticed. It wasn't like I was ever unpopular, I had just always felt like I didn't register on many people's radars. I was the smart one, who handed her homework in on time and barely even took sick days. At the end of our high school days, it was nice to be part of an in-joke._

_Some time and several students kicked out for being drunk later, and Eric and I left the main lobby of the hotel that had hosted our Senior Year's last hurrah to get some air, winding our way through the grounds to come out near the artificial lake that the function room looked over. The moon was hanging low in the sky, lighting up the scene around us in a dull silvery light, and I leaned against his back as we looked at its reflection in the water without speaking. We'd been having a lot of these moments lately, moments coated in meaning, in words that didn't need to be said._

_After a while, the band inside announced their last song and the familiar chords of mine and Jason's favourite Tim McGraw song were struck up. Jase said he had memories of our Daddy singing it to Mom before they'd passed, and growing up, I'd always been able to tell if he was feeling low because that would be the song coming from his bedroom. _

"_Dance with me?" I asked quietly, turning to face my boyfriend. He wrapped an arm around my waist, took my hand in his and I rested my head against his chest. We swayed together for the length of the song and when it came to an end, he kissed me softly. The silence hung between us, heavy with the weight of the thoughts we had but couldn't give voice to._

"_You are my favourite person in the world, Sookie Stackhouse" he told me, and for some reason that sentiment moved me more than his telling me he loved me did._

"_And you're my favourite person in the whole universe, Eric Northman" I winked. He kissed my nose, and then the spell was broken. Tray, Sam and Tara staggered down the path towards us, Tara and Tray a little tipsy from the hip-flask we'd found in the Ladies earlier._

"_There you two are" Tara giggled, wrapping an arm round my waist and leaning against my side. "We're not interrupting anythin', are we?". She nudged me pointedly._

"_Pfft". I waved a hand at her, adopting my best innocent Southern Belle drawl. "I'm sure I don't know what you're talkin' about, Miss Tara. Mr Northman and I were simply takin' the air"._

"_It sure is a fine night" Sam drawled, wrapping an arm around Tara's waist._

_We stood on the bank of that lake for an age, arms wrapped around each other, thinking about the year that had been, and contemplating the year ahead of us, the changes we'd see, the people we'd become. Any excitement I felt however, was tempered by the start of my own inner count-down. We we close to seeing out the school year, graduation and summer were just around the corner. I already had my space in halls in New York and had an email from my room-mate to be, a girl called Amelia. Eric's parents had started boxing up their life for the past year a couple of weeks ago, and Eric had been accepted as an apprentice set-designer for a theatre company in Sweden. The big changes we had been so scared of were finally upon us and we hadn't spoken about it to each other since that afternoon in my bedroom. Our real lives were just about to start._

_So where did that leave us?_

_0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o _

Between a very large rock, and a very hard place, that's pretty much where. Graduation day came and went, and both of us continued refusing to address the nosily trumpeting elephant turning cartwheels in the middle of the room. It was easier not to, easier to pretend that everything would work out just the way we wanted it to, that a solution solving all our problems would drop magically into our laps and we'd be saved from making the hard decisions. Because it wouldn't be fair for it to happen any other way. How could we feel the way we did about each other, get along as well as we did, have the chemistry that we did, for it to come to nothing? So we ignored the awkwardness, refusing to acknowledge it, because we loved each other, and John Lennon had once taught me that all we need is love.

The Beatles got it wrong. At the end of the day you need more, so much more, than love.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: By-the-by, this is completely un-beta'd, so any mistakes are my own. Thanks for the lovely reviews!**

**Disclaimer (totally should have done this before now, but FF was doing it's freaky thing...): These characters are the property of Charlaine Harris. I'm just giving 'em 'issues'.**

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**SPOV**

_I looked round my room, scanning it for the last time for anything I could possibly have forgotten. It wasn't likely that I had; I'd had lists taped up around the mirror on my vanity and all over my closet doors for three weeks now. My lists had lists, that was how organised I was._

_The holiday was nearly over, and you could almost taste the anticipation for new beginnings in the air. Tara had left three days ago for Tulane. She was moving in with Lafayette down there, and was already bemoaning the amount of weight she was bound to put on. Sam had applied as assistant manager at the grill we'd both been working in for years. He had big plans for a take-over, once he'd earned enough money. Tray had been taken in by a mechanic in Shreveport, who was so impressed that he would actually have a member of staff with a high school certificate, he'd offered him an apprenticeship, and a shot at head mechanic within the year. _

_I was leaving for New York in two days._

_Eric was leaving for Sweden the following week._

_It had been easy not to think about it for most of the summer, caught up in the haze of long, hot days and the nights we spent in the tree-house at Sam's, drinking beer and making plans for world domination. The idea that we would have to go out into that world remained very much abstract, until the week before Tara left. We'd had a girls night in, just the two of us, which had resulted in a lot of crying, pinky-promising and one threat- from Tara- of slicing her palm open to make us blood-sisters._

_Now, with her gone, Sam working his butt off at the grill and Tray doing the same in Shreveport, there were no more distractions for Eric and I._

_He knocked on my door, breaking my train of thought, and leaned against the jamb, casting his eyes round my room, at the bare spots on the wall where just this morning there had been photographs and posters, tickets stubs and random doodlings drawn on the ripped out pages of work-books._

"_Done?" he asked, giving me a sad, resigned sort of smile._

"_Just about" I sighed, walking over and wrapping my arms around him, tucking my head under his chin. "Just got clothes left to box up, but I'll do them tomorrow"._

_He didn't say a word. I could feel the tension in his lean frame, coiling his muscles._

"_Let's go for a walk" he suggested, tugging me by the hand. We left by the back door, walking slowly over the grass to the tree-line, which we followed round to the river. The night was heavy with heat, the humidity condensing on our skin as we walked._

_We came to a stop on the bank of the sluggishly moving river and sat down, his back against the tree trunk, my back against his chest. He held me tight, despite the uncomfortable heat, and we sat together quietly for what felt like decades. I don't know about him, but I was committing the feel of him to memory, absorbing the way his chest moved, the way he smelt for what I felt was the last time._

"_Is this it?" he asked eventually, his chin on the top of my head. He didn't have to clarify. I'd been wondering the same thing every time I'd seen him for the last fortnight. He was just brave enough to say the words out loud._

"_It feels like it, doesn't it?" I replied, closing my eyes against the nod of his head._

"_I love you, Sookie. I think I'll always love you". He was crying; not heaving sobs, but his voice had thickened. I couldn't turn to face him. I was sure I'd break into pieces if I saw the wobble in his chin._

"_I love you too. More than I can say"._

_We stayed where we were for a little longer, both of us crying and whispering the three little words that just weren't enough to save us over and over before deciding to stop drawing out the inevitable and making our way back to the house. He walked me to the back porch, letting go of my hand finger by finger. I stopped on the step above him and wrapped my arms round his neck, feeling the tears start again as he gripped me back, his face buried in the crook of my neck._

"_I had the most amazing year with you" I whispered._

"_Me too" he whispered back raggedly, letting go of me and brushing a strand of hair from my face. "Thank you"._

_I nodded, unable to speak past the hard lump in my throat._

"_Be safe" he instructed gently, kissing me once more before turning on his heel and heading for his truck. I watched as he climbed inside and sat behind the wheel for a moment, attempting to compose himself, before starting the engine and backing out, the gravel crunching under his tyres. I followed his lights down to the end of our driveway and as far as I could on Hummingbird Lane, before a bend in the road took him out of sight._

"_Goodbye Eric" I murmured to the tracks he'd left in the gravel, before letting myself back into the house and going to find my Gran._

_0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o_

I'd never been heart broken before. Oh sure, Bill had tried and to his credit, he'd given me a fairly good stomping over, but finding out he'd been fucking someone else because I wouldn't fuck him paled in comparison to what I felt as I watched Eric drive out of my life that night.

I'd never realised that it was called 'heart-break' because it feels like an actual, physical pain. I'd never realised that when it happened for real, I'd be able to feel that break, cracking across my heart like an earthquake. I lay in bed that night and wanted to carve my heart out of my chest with a spoon, because it hurt so much. How could something that felt so empty hurt so very, very much?

I didn't sleep at all, tossing and turning in between jags of crying so violent that I soaked both sides of my pillow. I got up at one stage and went rooting through the boxes stacked in the corner of my room in order to pull out Rat Bear, the stuffed toy I'd had for as long as I could remember- so-called because of the rodent-like tail that adorned his otherwise very bear-like form. I clung to Rat Bear the rest of the night, hugging him like he hadn't been hugged since I was five, and when I gave up on seeking sleep at about six o'clock the next morning and went into the bathroom to wash my salt-sticky face, I was greeted by my reflection in the mirror. Paler than a good Southern girl should be, despite the hours I'd spent tanning, with dark purple shadows blooming under my eyes.

I spent the day packing, and avoiding human contact as much as possible. I couldn't cling to Gran, much as I wanted to; I was leaving the next day and it wasn't like I'd be able to take her with me. My foray into the grown-up world had started, a couple of days ahead of schedule.

Sam attempted to take me out that evening, for something to eat and a farewell tour of Bon Temps. I'd held out for as long as I could before asking him to take me home. It wasn't his fault. It had been a lovely idea. It was just that, wherever we went, whatever we did, from Sam's chicken-fried steak at The Bayou to driving the back roads out to Shreveport, I thought about Eric. He was everywhere, in everything, and I missed him more than I'd thought possible. I could feel the lack of him at my side like a physical tug.

I had never thought I'd be so glad to get the hell out of Bon Temps.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

_I was crying. Again. At some point, I had turned into the girl who locks herself in bathroom stalls to sob. This time it was because we had been discussing 'Our Town' and 'Death of a Salesman' in my American Literature class and it had made me think about Eric, and his apprenticeship. Yesterday it was because someone in Starbucks had ordered a venti chai latte, which had made me think about how Eric was the only other person I'd ever heard order that. Last week it was because a toweringly tall sophmore had reached a book down off a top shelf in the library for me, and because when I'd gone to an old set of Lit notes brought with me from Bon Temps, I'd found the page on which we'd played endless games of hangman and noughts and crosses._

_It wasn't even things that directly reminded me of my boyfriend- **ex-boyfriend- **either. The wrong song on a shuffled playlist. A sappy advert on TV. A paragraph in the book I was currently reading. Sometimes I didn't even have a reason, I'd just realise I was sitting in the quad, staring into the middle distance, with my eyes welling up._

_I was a mess, and it was pathetic, but I couldn't help it. Not even a little bit._

_I was fairly sure my room-mate thought she'd been paired with a crazy woman. Amelia was my age, a hippy and full-on. She had the kind of personality that swelled to take over any room she was in, and she was very confused by my lack of enthusiasm for keg parties and silent discos. I felt kind of bad for her, to the extent that I'd looked into the price of a single room. She deserved a fun, excited room-mate, not one who needed to be treated like spun sugar or one who she'd worry about finding in a catatonic heap at the bottom of her closet._

_I dragged my hands over my face with a heavy sigh, grabbed my satchel from the back of the door and left the bathroom, carefully avoiding my reflection in the mirror, intent on getting back to my room. I'd hit my daily limit on pretending to feel okay and all I wanted to do was crawl into bed with next week's reading and a mug of cocoa. The effort I was putting into not falling completely apart in public felt impossibly huge and draining. There was only so long I could keep it up for._

_I got back to our room, but instead of finding it empty like it usually was on a Friday night, Amelia usually long gone to one campus bar or other, I found it lit entirely by candles covering every surface, and smelling strongly of incense. Amelia was sitting on the floor between our twin beds, in the middle of a circle marked out by yet more burning candle. There was a bowl of mixed semi-precious stones in front of her, her hair was tied back in a gauzy scarf and she was wearing a long skirt in multi-colours and a cropped belly top. She was sitting in a meditative position and was chanting softly. I caught the words **goddess **and **Gaia **from where I stood by the door._

_If only my staunchly Methodist grandmother could this. I definitely wasn't in Bon Temps anymore._

"_'Meels? What the...?"_

"_Ssshhh" she cut me off, gesturing to the space in front of her. "Come and sit, Sookie Stackhouse"._

_Fighting back the first genuine laughter I'd felt in weeks, I dumped my bag and sat opposite her, ignoring the voice of my old Sunday School mistress in the back of my mind, warning about witches and Ouija. I'd lived four hours away from New Orleans all my life. I had a healthy respect for the darker arts. Once I was seated, still trying not to giggle at the intensity on Amelia's face, she took my hands and pressed a cloudy pink stone into each of them._

"_Rose Quartz" she nodded. "It has protective and healing properties. Bear with here, okay?"_

_She kept hold of my hands and muttered to herself for a couple more minutes before looking at me with a directness I hadn't seen before._

"_Your aura's murky" she informed me bluntly. "There's been some big trauma or hurt in your life recently and it's unbalanced you"._

_I didn't know what to say. "I don't know what to say"._

"_Don't say anything. Just humour me, 'kay? Take a few minutes and think about whatever it is that's been on your mind. Register it. Acknowledge it properly. There's no point pretending to be okay because you're not, and you aren't letting your spirit heal"._

_I nodded and followed her lead as she closed her eyes, keeping a light hold on the two stones in my hand. With my eyes closed, I allowed myself to sink into the unhappiness I'd been trying so hard to ignore._

_The first thing I noticed was that I was angry, as well as sad. I had thought we could have something serious, something forever, and instead I was here. College scholarship. New York. Interesting classes and potential new friends, and I just wasn't excited about, or even enjoying, and of it. I was angry at us; for not coping better, for not having a better plan, for giving up so easily when I'd thought we had more fight in us._

_And then there was the sadness, bottomless but no less intense for its size. I'd been too busy trying to set up a new life, and too scared to dig around and find out where the damage had been done to sit down and really think about how I had been feeling, and when I realised I was crying- **again**- Amelia did nothing but squeeze my hands. When it felt like I'd cried out every tear I had, and could only feel a pleasant sort of numbness, I thought about him; what he'd be doing. How he was feeling. What I wanted for him. If I couldn't have him, I at least wanted him to be happy, or even just content, resigned to the us-that-was, rather than the us-that-could-have-been, so that he could meet someone else. Someone not as awesome as me, obviously, but someone who would love him like he deserved to be. And if I wanted that for him, surely he'd want the same thing for me? Surely he'd want me to be happy, to be excited about my fresh start and achieving something no one else in my family had done? He wouldn't want me to be so utterly lonely, so sad, so detached from my life when I should be relishing it. He'd always said I was the tough one really, and I couldn't help but feel like he'd be a bit disappointed to see how badly I'd crumbled, and realised that, much as I missed him, I was glad he wasn't around to see me like this._

_On that revelation, I pulled myself back to the surface of my own brain and squeezed Amelia's hands. Her eyes opened and she gave me an appraising look._

"_How's that?" she asked gently._

"_Better" I nodded. I was still sad, but I felt like I'd sort of assimilated it a bit. It already felt less like I was seeping heartache from my pores._

"_You look a little clearer already" was my room-mate's assessment before she stood up and began blowing out candles, muttering the whole time about fire safety regulations and spiritual discrimination._

_I felt drained as I went about preparing us a stir-fry dinner, but in an almost good way. Physically worn down in a way that promised me a deep and dreamless sleep. I grabbed hold of my final thoughts; that I wouldn't want Eric to see me like this, and that he'd always believed that I was brave. I could use them to build myself a bridge back to the kind of person I wanted to be. They might not fix me, but they could definitely help me find some of the bits of me that had been missing since we'd split up._

_That night, after chicken stir-fry and a Lost DVD marathon with Amelia and a friend from her Sociology class, lying in bed and watching passing shadows thrown through the blinds over the window, I began the slow process of tidying away Eric Northman into a box in the corner of my mind. He'd always be about, buried amongst the other detritus up there, but kept in the dark, I hoped the brightness of him would fade, and eventually I'd be able to open that box without pain or sadness, just an abiding fondness and gentle nostalgia._

_0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0_

Looking back, there's not much that I remember about those first few weeks in New York. I know that I went to class, because I'm a geek by default. I know that I made friends, because I still have their numbers in my cell. I know that I must have adjusted to the different pace of life pretty quickly, because New York had ended up feeling like home. But ask me for specifics about what I did, what I studied, what my initial impressions of my lecturers were, and I can't tell you. I was almost in a kind of shock, completely shut down but for the obnoxiously excited Freshman front I put on every day.

Eventually though, I got sick of myself and decided to give myself a two week grace period and then made a conscious effort to cheer up. I started participating in the world again, rather than just drifting through. It was hard at first, but after a month, I found that I wasn't pretending to be excited about cracking open a new course book, or attempting a subway bar-crawl. It took a while, probably a disproportionate amount of time considering how long Eric and I had been together- then again, whoever said love was in proportion with anything?- but I found my way back to myself. I was a little rougher round the edges sure, but slowly, I began to feel like me again.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N- Last chapter folks. Thanks very much for the lovely reviews :) I'm working on something else at the minute, it's coming a little more slowly than this did but I'd like to think I can start posting soon. I like to have a back-log to work from. Oh, and you just might be hearing from a certain someone in this chapter. Enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: The characters belong to Charlaine Harris. The lyrics to 'Tim McGraw' belong to Taylor Swift. I'm just mooshing my two most embarrassing obsessions together. **

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**Chapter 4**

**Present Day...**

**SPOV**

It was the night before I left for LA that Jase dropped the bombshell.

"Eric said he'd send someone round to look at that guttering tomorrow" he said across the table to Gran, who was loading his plate with mashed potato.

"Excuse me?". I choked on a mouthful of sweet tea.

Jason and Gran exchanged a pointed look and I set my cutlery down, glaring between them.

"Shoot", muttered Jason. "I guess I owe Hoyt that twenty now. He said I'd never be able to keep my mouth shut an entire week".

"I don't care about your gambling debts, Jase. What the hell was that about Eric?".

"Language" Gran interjected mildly and I turned my glare on her.

"Don't think you're off the hook either" I shot at her, ignoring the look that told me I wasn't too old for a clip round the ear. "Eric?" I asked my brother. "My Eric? He's here? You've seen him?".

"He ain't been your Eric in a long while Sook" Jason warned me.

"Nonsense Jason Stackhouse" Gran interrupted. "That boy will always be Sookie's Eric".

I swallowed against the lump that rose in my throat when she reached across the table and took my hand, squeezing it tightly. Much as I hated it, much as it made me feel like the crazy ex-girlfriend I'd never wanted to be, I couldn't help but feel like she was right. He'd always felt more like mine than anyone else's. He still did, all these years on.

Jason gave an uncomfortable sigh and set his cutlery down. "Yeah, I seen him. He's been in Shreveport about a year now, I guess. Seems like his daddy expanded his construction business and offered Eric the run of the Shreveport division".

"Do you see him a lot?". I hated the quaver in my voice, but Eric Northman was a bruise on my heart that had never quite healed up right. If I went poking around enough, I could always find a sore spot.

"Not very much. He's pretty settled out there. He ain't got a girlfriend or anything" he added swiftly, seeing the expression on my face.

"Where's he staying?" I asked quietly, returning to my food and pushing green beans round my plate.

"Sook..." Jason started gently, looking at me like he thought I might break.

"Jase, please. Where's he living?".

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

I didn't know what I was intending to do with the information Jason gave me about Eric. I'd wanted the knowledge. I wanted to be able to slot him into the landscape of my home town. I definitely hadn't intended to end up sitting in my brother's truck, parked down the street from my ex's house, staring at the light coming from his lounge window like I expected the Good Lord to walk from it. Yet, here I was, sitting in Jason's noisily idling truck like the world's worst stalker, torturing myself with my ex-boyfriend like the past four years never happened.

I'd gone through the hat-box again after dinner, examining the photographs and notes written on scraps torn from workbooks like they held the key to us. Buried at the bottom, slipped almost completely under a fold in the cardboard, I'd found a letter. The Letter. The one I'd written at a low point in the summer between first and second year, when I'd come back to Bon Temps for the longest amount of time since leaving the summer before and realised that the place would probably always be a bit haunted for me. I had tried to send him, before I realised I didn't have an address for him anymore.

_Dear Eric,_

_When you think Tim McGraw, I hope you think my favourite song. Someday you'll turn your radio on..._

In some ways I could barely believe it was me who'd written it. I'd been so heartbroken, so hopeless. In some ways though, a lot of it still rang true. I'd loved him so very much, and I'd been so desperate to hold onto the vestiges of us. Re-reading it brought home how much I'd missed him, and how much I'd clung on to whatever I had left. I'd buried the hurt and the sadness sure, I'd had to in order to keep up in New York, but I'd held on to the pair of jeans I'd been wearing the first time he'd told me he loved me like a talisman. The ribbon from my prom corsage had been incorporated into a quilt that Gran had made me a couple of years ago, and I kept the dress in its plastic wrap and took it with me everywhere. I'd never really let us go, no matter how deeply I'd kept us buried.

It had been four years. I still missed him. I still loved him. I just didn't know what any of it was worth anymore.

I flipped the letter between my fingers, age-worn at the corners and along the fold lines. There was a second note to go with it, less hopelessly love-lorn, and, still debating the merits of handing them both over, I got out of the truck and walked up to his porch, a lead feeling in my stomach. After God knows how long standing in front of his door however, when my stomach flipped as I finally raised my hand to ring the bell, I listened- after a lifetime of ignoring my gut completely- and dropped my finger away from the button. I stood debating with myself until a dog barked in the yard next door, shattering the silence of the street and making me jump. I dropped the letters to the mat, turned tail and bolted for the truck, refusing to turn around and look back as I heard the door behind me open.

I kicked myself as I drove home. I had no idea what I was trying to achieve here. Closure, maybe? For both of us? Something I never really felt like we'd had. And I thought he deserved to know; that he was special, that I had loved him and that hadn't just stopped. It had coloured everything about the last four years. However, on the off chance his bruises hadn't quite healed either, I didn't leave any contact information. I didn't want to sucker punch them black again.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

**EPOV**

It hadn't been easy, moving back to Louisiana. Shreveport was entirely too close to Bon Temps to be comfortable, and held more than a few ghosts of its own.

There we were, walking hand in hand back to my truck after yet another shit movie.

There we were at the McDonald's Drive-Thru on our way back from a weekend in New Orleans with Lafayette.

I had to drive past the turn-off to that road my damn truck had broken down on every fucking day.

Don't get me started on on the radio. Fucking awful country music on every station, every day. A knife between the ribs that sometimes I stuck in myself, if only to prove that I wasn't completely oblivious to the world going on round me.

I'd adjusted though, doing my bit for the Northman Empire. It had seemed like a better idea than mooching around Stockholm for another year whilst I tried to figure out what it was I really wanted to do. The theatre gig after graduation had fallen through after one season's run, and after four and half years of soul-destroying jobs in admin and one brief stint on a building site, my dad had eventually asked if I wanted to try my hand at the business. It wasn't a bad job, but it wasn't exactly the creative calling I'd felt at eighteen either. Like what so much else in my life had turned into, it was a place-holder, until the thing I really wanted came along.

It had been a long fucking day by the time I got home that evening, glad to get out of the baking summer heat. I did a quick workout in the small gym I'd set up in my garage and fixed myself dinner, eating it in front of the television. I was just beginning to fall asleep when I heard the Henderson's dog bark outside and heaved myself from the couch to see if he'd gotten into my yard again.

There was no dog when I opened my front door, and no other noise on my quiet street except the sound of retreating boot heels. An envelope on the mat beneath my feet caught my attention and I picked it up, flipping it over to read the front. My stomach lurched when I saw the messy scrawl and I immediately strode to the end of my drive, looking after the retreating footsteps. I could make out a figure walking away, the street-lights casting her in an orange glow as she passed beneath them, heading back to a truck I recognised parked some way down the pavement.

Sookie.

I knew it was her. I'd know that walk anywhere. I reckon I'd be able to pick her nose out of a hundred. The shout stuck in my throat though, and I watched her climb into the truck's cab, pull from the pavement and U-turn in the middle of the road, driving away without looking back.

I took the envelope inside, leaving it on my bedside table whilst I locked up and got myself ready for bed, feeling its presence in my house like a physical tug as I did tiny chores I otherwise wouldn't have bothered with to put off the inevitable. I only opened it after I climbed beneath the covers, propped up on a mound of pillows. I pulled two letters out and flipped to the most recent one; the paper more substantial feeling, the ink less faded, and began to read.

_Dear Eric,_

_I thought you deserved to know; letting you go wasn't easy. It still isn't. Sometimes I think I'm still not doing a very good job of it. What I wrote when I was eighteen might have been more than a little influenced by the Brontë sisters, but that doesn't mean it's not true at its core. I loved you, and I think I always will. I missed you. And I think I always will. It's weird to think of how much the eleven months we spent together shaped who I've become, who I am now. I know couples that have been together for years and haven't impacted each other half as much as we did. _

_I hope the last few years have been good to you. I hope you like your life. I hope you've lived, and learned, and loved, and become everything I've always known you could be._

_I do hope you think of me sometimes when you happen across a Tim McGraw song on the radio. I hope the memories are fond. Mine are._

_Yours Always,_

_Sookie._

It occurred to me, as I wiped my face clear from tears, that I only ever cried over this one person. The last time was four years ago, sitting outside the brightly lit farmhouse at the end of Hummingbird Road. She had been gone five days and eighteen hours by that point, and each one of those hours had dragged like I was trapped in a Kubrick film. I had sat at the bottom of the drive, looking up at the one window in the whole place that wasn't streaming light down onto the yard, and cried for so long I'd gotten worried I wouldn't stop. I couldn't bring myself to believe that if I went to knock on the door, she wouldn't be there to open it. I couldn't believe that come tomorrow, I wouldn't even have this place to sit outside of and miss her. She would be nowhere in Stockholm and the idea of walking streets that had never had her on them wasn't liberating at all; it was fucking scary. I had no frame of reference for her there, so rather than keeping my memories restrained to specific places and activities, like I''d been doing here, they would infiltrate everything. What was more, I was going back to a city I'd lived in since I was a child to see once familiar sights through my newly developed Sookie-vision. Leaving wouldn't be an escape. It was a prison sentence; doomed to hear her excited exclamations in my head and see her in every wavy blonde head snapping photographs.

Pulling myself back together, I tried to tell myself that rationally, my reaction to her was ridiculous. We'd dated for less than a year after all. And yet...I had never been able to clear her totally from my system. She had become the benchmark against which no other girl had quite been able to measure up.

I read the other letter, the older one, full of enthusiastic proclamations and promises to find me again, love-lorn and dramatic. I had to smile at what she'd written three years ago. She'd never been very expressive out loud, but given a paper and pen, there was nothing she couldn't say, no complex emotion she couldn't describe. She'd grown up a lot in the interim. She sounded old in her more recent letter, older than she really was. She sounded sad too, I thought (hoped?). Resigned. Which was never something I'd felt with regards to us. Stubborn to a fault, I'd never been able to settle comfortably with the notion that we were finished. We'd always felt like the ending of a chapter, not the closing of a book. For whatever it was worth, I still didn't think we were done, and her emergence at my place tonight only served to shore me up in that. If I'd known she was going to be back in town I'd have been camping out on Adele's back porch.

I thought about hauling myself back out of bed and heading over to Bon Temps but decided against it. I had no idea what I'd say to her at the minute, no idea why she was back, whether she was passing through or planning something more permanent, and the kind of conversations we needed to have required patience and time and brains functioning on higher levels, none of which we'd have at one o'clock in the morning.

Resolving to speak to Jason the next day, I flipped my light off and tucked the letters under my pillow. When I finally fell asleep, after over an hour of rehearsing hypothetical conversations in my head and out-loud to the empty pillow beside me, it was to dreams of broken down pick-up trucks in the middle of a deserted New York City, and Sookie roaring with laughter beside me.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

I was glad to have a legitimate reason to call Sookie's brother the next morning, so I didn't feel quite so much like a stalker. As it turned out, the guy I'd been sending over to do Adele's gutters had called in sick. I'd organised someone else, but he had a couple of jobs to do in Shreveport first. This was what I opened with when he greeted me with a chipper 'Mornin' Stretch'.

"No problem" was his response. "I'll let the old lady know when I'm over there for lunch".

"Give her my apologies" I instructed him, and instead of hanging up, I continued to hang on the line.

"Everything all right, Eric?" he asked knowingly. People who claimed Jason Stackhouse didn't have two brain cells to rub together just didn't know him well enough.

"Sookie..." I began, and was cut off by his heavy sigh.

"Yeah, she's back. I didn't wanna tell her, but you know what she's like. Maxine Fortenberry's mule's not as stubborn as my sister. Sorry if she went nuts on you, man. I tried to tell her not to".

I laughed, wondering what Sookie's reaction to her brother's speech would be. Five-year-ago Sookie would have tried to kick his ass, and would've held her own doing it.

"It's okay Jase. I was actually wondering if you knew where I could find her today?"

"Jesus H. Christ, not you too?" he groaned. "Look Eric, m' sorry to be the one to tell you, but she left. Again. Headed for Los Angeles first thing this morning. She got a fancy magazine job out there".

My heart sank right down through my stomach, my legs and into my Kicks, bottoming out on the floor.

"Oh. Right". Our timing had always been shitty. It was almost comforting to know some things in life really never do change.

"I've got an email address for her though. You know what she's like with her cell". Awful. A curse, I used to tell her. She'd gotten through five in the eleven months we'd dated. She dropped them, lost them, put them through the washing machine and once, posted one with a package she had been returning to Amazon.

"Got a pen?"

It was a stretch, a frayed-out thread of hope to cling to for someone who had felt he had been struggling up mountains for four years without her. She could ignore an email. She could pretend she'd never gotten it. But considering the tone of the letter I'd read last night,I wasn't sure how likely that was. It was a shot. A long shot, but then I'd always had a good arm. I'd been on the athletics team in senior year.

I wrote down her address, thanked Jason and hung up, attaching the Post-It note to my desktop and staring at it contemplatively for ten minutes before typing out an email and saving it in my draft folder. There was a lot to say, a lot of catching up to be done before I could even think about approaching the idea of an 'us'. We'd had such potential, even at the age of eighteen, but time and space were things that had seemed insurmountable back then. We'd worn our shiny new potential out in eleven months, tarnished it dull grey instead and not even tried to polish it up again before throwing it out. Maybe now we could have the time and inclination. Maybe we'd still have that chemistry. Maybe all it would take was thirty minutes in the same room to realise that we were still in love with each other. Maybe there would be nothing except mutual affection and a tinge of guilt and regret. Maybe, at the end of the day, all we would be were the ones that got away.

But we'd never know unless one of leapt, praying the other would be the net to stop them falling.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

**Two Weeks Later...**

**SPOV**

My day started like any other. I got up and went for a run on the beach before heading back to the apartment to shower and get breakfast before leaving for work. I had a piece on an indie-director's latest offering to write, and I wanted to do some research into an idea for a full-length article that I'd had the other night. I checked emails while my bread toasted, and nearly choked on my second cup of coffee of the morning when I saw a familiar name sitting in my inbox.

**To: Sookie Stackhouse.**

**From: Eric Northman.**

**Subject: Stop Freaking Out...**

**I got your address through perfectly legitimate channels. Well, Jason gave it to me. After I asked. Then begged. Then blackmailed. Not sure how legit you consider that to be.**

**You've still got the most beautiful eyes I've ever seen.**

That was all it said. I smiled at my computer and contemplated my response as I munched my toast and honey. Before I left, I emailed him back.

**To: Eric Northman.**

**From: Sookie Stackhouse.**

**Subject: I Take Xanax Now...**

**It'd take more than your name on an email for me to freak out. I jest. I'm not on Xanax, though I'm probably the only person in the whole city that can say that truthfully.**

**Long time, no see.**

When I walked into my cubicle forty minutes later, my Blackberry had already buzzed in my bag with a reply. I smiled as I sat down at my desk and organised the notebooks and files on it, catching sight of the picture I kept tacked up on my wall of all of us; Tray, Sam, Tara, Lafayette, Eric and myself, all of us beaming into the camera.

Gran told me once over the phone not long after I'd left for New York, that when you loved something you had to let it go, you had to let it be free. If it loved you back, it would find a way of returning to you. Ultimately, Eric and I had had to let each other go. But, I wondered idly, choosing to wait to reply to his mail until lunch and work on my article instead, maybe we were always supposed to find each other again, somewhere down the road. Maybe that letter wasn't meant to be closure. Maybe it was the crack in a door almost closed, just wide enough to get our fingers into and pull gently open.


End file.
